About Me

I'm a freelance artist, designer and demonstrator and have been involved in arts and craft my whole life in one way or another. I design stamps for top British company Personal Impressions, under the "Lindsay Mason Designs" brand, as well as papers, templates and other crafting products. I'm a certified Ranger Educator and my first book,"Stamping", was published in 2009. I also design regular projects for Crafts Beautiful magazine and have made guest appearances from time to time on QVC. I've recently joined You Tube under the name of LindsayMason1000 where I'm posting short technique videos and you can buy my paintings and hand crafted pieces from my Etsy shop. My work takes me all around the country demonstrating stamping, papercrafts and general inkiness! When I'm not working, I love gardening, church & community activities, nature watching, journalling, music and theatre and just relaxing at home. Email me at: ljm.design1@virginmedia.com

Monday, 23 August 2010

A few photos and birthday fun

Hello all, I've had a busy, but very enjoyable weekend and have a few photos to share with you. The first ones are of the cards which I designed for the workshop on Saturday. It was, as ever, a little hectic but lots of fun too! This first one, features acetate that has been embossed with a snowflake design before being alcohol inked. I then swiped a black Archival ink pad over the surface and wiped off the ink to leave the snowflakes clear again. I simply mounted the panel onto card, added a white card "snowscape" and a few trees made with a MS punch were tucked in behind the snow. I stamped my Christmas teddy and snowman and added this, then stamped a greeting as well as punching the card corners with another MS punch (Aspen). Sorry the image looks so blue - my camera seems to like blue at the moment as every close up has a blue tinge! The next card is completely different, though still based around acetate. This time I stamped one of my favourite TH stamps (the serious faces lend themselves to adding an amusing word or two!) onto acetate, heat set the Archival ink and then painted the image from behind using Blending Solution to thin the colours. This is such a fun technique as the inks work so differently from paints - one colour will replace the colour beneath it, but, dabbling the colours on is a good way to get a very colourful look to the piece. I then mounted the piece over Personal Impressions Metallic film to give a glow behind the coloured image. Some distressed paper then seperated the image from the TH paper which I had used to cover the card blank. A distressed Adage Ticket, some TH tissue tape and an alcohol inked ribbon were the finishing touches. At my demonstration on Sunday I was asked, by a lady named Gail, what a painted acetate piece would look like over gilding flakes, so I made up a piece of white card covered with a silver and gold mix of flakes so that Gail could see the effect, which, we all agreed was pretty good and rather reminded me of a craft that I did as a child where we had black designs on glass and covered the backs with differently coloured sweetie wrappers! No picture of it I'm afraid, as the flashback was too much on the acetate. Anyway, hope you like this card. The last one was the one I wasn't sure about, but everyone on the class really liked it! The main image was created by colouring some white tissue pieces with alcohol inks in various shades. The stamped acetate was then flipped over and I piped Glossy Accents over the image, sprinkled on just a little fine glitter and then pressed small scraps of the tissue to colour the image. Once dry, I mounted the image onto the card (covered with TH paper), and added punched strips and a butterfly - these were from dull silver card that I'd alcohol inked. It's a very busy card, but sometimes I like going a little over the top! Here are a few snaps of the workshop with everyone hard at work! We also did some very simple stamping onto tissue which we then applied to candles. And you can see how everyone is concentrating very intently! At this point, I am now typing this on Tuesday evening! I started this post last night but David wanted to watch a film (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which we've watched before, but that whole series can stand being watched a few times!) so I saved everything till today - more on today a bit later! So, back to the weekend...on Saturday night I was staying with Rena and Stephen (Amy's mum and dad). Amy and her little boy, Ben, came back with us for a couple of hours and we had another lovely dinner cooked by Stephen who is an excellent host! I had been warned that Alicia (Amy's niece) had seen something being made on a CBBC programme and that she was sure that I would know how to make it! It was some sort of tap...gulp! None of us had seen it, so we really didn't have a clue what it was that I was supposed to be making! (I have since googled it, so will be ready next time!) I decided that diversion was the best tactic, so I suggested that we make a magic card instead. We spent some time making the card mechanism, which has secret flaps, and then Alicia had great fun decorating it with lots of stickers. She showed Rena and Stephen and immediately turned to me to say "Shall we make the tap now Lindsay?"......hilarious! So, another idea had to be found, and I suggested that we make a Princess Tiara. This went down well, and involved lots more stickers, as you can see. Here's me crowning the little Princess..... .......and here she is the next morning in all her cuteness! On Sunday I was demonstrating in store at Dawn's Studio along with Mary who was showing card ideas and techniques with stencilling paste. I was showing the techniques used in the workshop as well as general ideas for Christmas cards and ATC's. Hello to everyone that came along, including Sheila and her mum - I'll post a photograph of them both tomorrow along with a picture of all the lovely ATC's that I swapped with Sheila, Elaine, Jacqui and Glen. I am going to have to sort out some more storage for my collection of ATC's soon!
Today was my sister, Heather's, birthday and we decided that, rather than me going over to see her, she would come over here and we'd spend the day in town. We have had a lovely day, looking round the shops, including an inordinately long time in Paperchase, where we stroked lots of handmade papers, picked some notebooks for Art Journalling in and generally had our eyes on stalks over all the amazing colours, patterns and textures! We ate a delicious lunch in Bella Italia and did some more window shopping...and a bit of real shopping too of course! Heather had received some cards and gifts from her blog friends and ATC swappers, so that was really lovely. I think she is having a quiet night in with a her family and a takeaway tonight after all the trudging about that we did! So, "happy birthday" again Heather, hope you had a good one!
Now, talking of Art Journalling, due to the huge interest I've had in my doodly drawings which I've shown on here recently, and mainly due to Amy requesting it, we are going to be holding "an introduction to Art Journalling" workshop at Dawn's design studio. It will be on Saturday October 23rd from 10am - 1pm, so my afternoon workshop "Christmas Cute but Clever" will now be running from 1.30pm - 4.30pm to accomodate the morning one. This will be an introductory class for anyone who wants to start journalling, doodling, drawing, and creating arty pages. You will need to bring your own colouring pens, such as Promarkers or Copics, but if you don't have these then you will be able to use my water based pens as well as paints and coloured pencils. Fine line pens will be provided for you to use. You won't be working directly into notebooks but will be learning how to create background scenes, patterns and textures as well as how to start drawing your own characters, naive figures etc. If you'd like to book on this workshop please call Topaz directly (see link in the left sidebar) and if you would like any more information then do email me.
Well, I must go, as David has been working hard this evening, so I am going to make him a lovely coffee now. I'll post again soon, Lindsay

2 comments:

Amy Shaw said...

It was lovely to see you again Mason!!
Alicia looks gorgeous as ever and is still talking about her tap - I will let her know that you have found one and do it next time!! She will be over the moon!!
Cannot wait for your Journalling class, I was first on the list and I have my ProMakers at the ready!! Cannot wait!!

See you then
loads of love
amy
x

Joanne said...

As you know, I can't draw for toffee. Would this be ok for me or am I being negative again?
Luv Joanne xx